A few weeks back, I gave a heads up to our Facebook followers that releases were dropping across the virtual desk by the metric tonne, and warned with a twinkle of bemusement that if they kept coming in at the rate they had been, this month’s Roundup was going to be a monster.

And sure enough.

At the time of writing these lines, there are over 110 albums, EPs and a handful of singles under review this month, with the potential if not likelihood that we’ll see a few more arrive before we close out and finalize (hell, there are already a handful of October-range releases on schedule for next month’s post…)

After an extended summer’s worth of half-length Roundups necessitated by a virtual dearth of releases, this month has swung straight to the opposite end of the pendulum, with more stuff to cover than readers have seen since quite early in the year.

Even to the moment I’m writing these very words, new releases are positively pouring in from one label or individual band contact after another, leading to further and further revisions and extensions to this rather spooky seasonal roundup. As it is, I already have a fair sized batch of releases earmarked for the November iteration thereof…

So rather than getting into the eerie and unearthly uncanniness of this spectral season of Samhain, what say we get into the spirit of things, putting the old behind us and forging forward into the new?

Well, here we are again, with the first strains of Fall wafting their way into view…then vanishing again…then back again…whoops, now it’s clearly Indian summer, complete with near 90 degree temperatures, intense humidity and a whole hell of a lot of sweating. What the hell?

Any way you slice it, September is always a really f***ed up month.

And so it is perhaps appropriate that we come to what may be the most bizarrely disparate collections of music we’ve been given to review in some time, from upbeat AOR and Christian metal to some of the darkest corners of the black metal subgenre, ones that venture where even seasoned fans hesitate to tread.

Welcome to Spring! Well, almost, and if you don’t count the wildly whipping changeability between relative warm weather and bitter cold snaps at the drop of a hat…didn’t that damn groundhog predict an early end to Winter? Just can’t trust anyone these days…

As your family and friends proceed to make merry and pass around the turkey and the pumpkin pie, we’re going to take a few minutes of your time as we review a few holiday offerings spanning everything from traditional metal and AOR standbys to neo-folk and black metal…or in other words, business as usual.

As noted in one of my earlier DVD reviews, this is a strange time of year for releases. Labels and manufacturers realize you’ve probably already spent your holiday cash and are likely saving the bigger guns for sometime in the new year, so there tends to be less new material available for your eager hands to sort through.

Despite that, we still have a good twenty something platters to spin and lay down the verdict on for you, so put on your Santa hat, kick back with some spiked egg nog and crack out the Bailey’s Irish Creme, because we’re not letting a little thing like the biggest holiday of the year stop us, right?